The Russian Riviera

"Some businessmen” was how Skinny Zyama had described the two gangsters from New Jersey.

“You want me there for a meeting with businessmen?” Kostya had asked.

“You have other plans on a Wednesday afternoon?”

“No.”

“Wear a jacket,” Zyama had said.

Now, stationed as instructed beside Skinny Zyama’s mahogany desk, Kostya appraised the gangsters. Zyama had placed two leather armchairs in front of his desk, but only the smaller of the two had consented to sit. The larger one, the one doing all the talking, had turned his chair sideways and perched himself on its arm. Instinctively, Kostya gauged each man’s weight. They were both wearing suits, but that made no difference. Kostya had been conditioned by years at the gym, and his mind conjured up a man’s weight and class just as, seeing an apple, it conjured up taste and smell. He’d barely considered the gangsters before his mind had announced: Sixty-four kilos and eighty-five kilos; welterweight and cruiserweight. This was one of his few demonstrable skills—which, like the others, had brought him little profit.

The larger gangster looked powerful through the back and shoulders, but he carried himself arrogantly, gestured excessively with his hands, and punctuated his demands by thrusting out his chin. In contrast, the smaller one hardly moved at all. He kept his hands folded in his lap and followed the conversation with his eyes. His neck and his ankles were thin, and he was pale in the manner of someone who is either very sick or very spartan. Of the two, Kostya supposed that the smaller man posed the greater danger, though, to be precise, the greatest danger was posed by neither of them. The greatest danger was posed by Skinny Zyama, who had assumed an obnoxious air of invulnerability.

“These are competitive times. You could benefit from our help,” the larger gangster said.

“The place is busy four nights a week,” Zyama said. “Impossible to get a table Friday or Saturday without a reservation. We have the best Vegas-style floor show in the city. Professional dancers trained in Russia. Where’s my competition?”

“There are other restaurants. They could become more successful.”

“The other restaurants are run by imbeciles. Their customers are people who couldn’t get a table here.”

“With the right guidance, those restaurants could improve. With connections, they could attract popular entertainers from New York and New Jersey.”

“Listen, Alla Pugacheva and Arkady Raikin could perform every Saturday night for a month and those idiots would still find a way to lose money.”

“There are other possibilities. Something unfortunate could happen to your restaurant or to you.”

Zyama, who had been reclining in his suède admiral’s chair, tilted forward and made a production of looking the gangster in the eye. “You think you’re the first ones to come in here? Understand: I’m in business all these years not because I give money to every hoodlum with his hand out.”

Kostya watched the larger gangster unbutton his jacket and slide his hand inside. Cursing Skinny Zyama, Kostya took a step in the gangster’s direction. If the man had a gun, there wasn’t much he could do about it, but he knew that if the gangster motioned toward his pocket he was required to take a step forward. There was an understanding among everyone in the room that this was how it was supposed to be. The script had been written long ago and performed by other men in other rooms and in movies.

Seeing this, the gangster grinned. He proceeded to feel around inside his jacket, and then he extended his hand. In place of a gun was a business card.

“My gun I keep down here,” he said, raising the cuff of his left trouser leg. Strapped above his ankle was a pistol in a black padded holster. “You see, we are civilized businessmen. Before we reach for that, we reach for this.”

He placed the card on Skinny Zyama’s desk.

“We manage very respectable artists. We provide security. Many good Russian restaurants in New Jersey and Brooklyn are our customers. There is a phone number on the card. It is our mobile phone. Think about what we said and call. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll come Saturday night to see for ourselves how successful you are.”

After the gangsters left, Skinny Zyama picked up the business card and flicked it into his wastebasket. He passed his hand along the surface of his desk and examined his fingertips for dust. “Small-timers. Nobodies. Who do they think they’re dealing with?”

Kostya waited for a few moments to see if he would say anything else. Zyama rapped his knuckles on the edge of the desk. He spun the knob of his Rolodex. He reached into a drawer for a pack of cigarettes.

“Is that it?” Kostya asked.

“That one sits staring like a mummy. The other one with the gun on his leg. Think they can intimidate me in my own place. I shit on them from a tall bridge,” Zyama said.

That was Zyama’s final word. He was Zyama Karp, the impresario of the Russian Riviera restaurant. He was a man of influence. Not someone to be pushed around. And, after all, he had Kostya, a Siberian boxing champion.

“If they come back on Saturday, you take care of them,” Zyama said.

From the Russian Riviera, Kostya drove to the Prima Donna Ballet Academy to return a blouse that Ivetta had forgotten at his apartment. Ivetta frequently forgot things at his apartment, only to discover that the thing she had forgotten was exactly the thing she could not live without. Kostya no longer resisted this; he had learned that it was best simply to return the item—a blouse, a pair of earrings, a lipstick—as soon as possible. He had also learned that once Ivetta resumed possession of these things her need for them diminished.

Ivetta was waiting at the entrance to the ballet school. She took a moment to confirm that he had brought the blouse, then lifted herself into the van.

“I have five minutes,” she said. “We should drive around the block.”

As Kostya eased the van onto the street, Ivetta looked up at her mother’s office, on the second floor of the Ballet Academy.

“I think I see her standing there,” Ivetta said.

Kostya interpreted this as a signal to drive faster, but when he accelerated Ivetta told him to slow down. If her mother was watching, Ivetta didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing her behave furtively. Kostya didn’t completely understand the rules that governed Ivetta’s attitude toward her mother, but he knew that Luda Sorkin disapproved of him. Luda had been a prima ballerina. She was a cultured person. She was also a successful businesswoman. She had schooled her daughter in the fine arts, she had given her a university education, and she was grooming her to take over the business. That such a woman would want more for her daughter than someone who was a failed boxer, a doorman, and an illegal immigrant seemed to him perfectly reasonable. In fact, he could understand Luda’s logic better than Ivetta’s. Why Ivetta should not want to be with him made much more sense than why she should. When Kostya told her as much recently, she had led him from the bed to their reflection in his mirrored closet door.

“We are beautiful together,” she said.

Kostya supposed they looked good. He still went to the gym five days a week and was conscious of his physique. And Ivetta had the long, slender muscles of a trained dancer. At the restaurant and on the street, Kostya was aware that men looked at her. She was attractive in the usual ways, but Kostya’s eyes were always drawn to the intricate places where different parts of her joined: her shoulders, her collarbone, the backs of her knees, her ankles, her hands.

“You could be beautiful together with someone else,” Kostya told her.

“Then you don’t see what I see,” Ivetta said glumly, and she moved away from him and hunched on the edge of the bed.

That he didn’t see what Ivetta saw had been precisely the origin of the conversation, and so her answer did nothing to clarify things. Kostya considered pointing this out but knew that it would only irritate her further.

“You are honest and good,” Ivetta had finally declared from her desolation at the edge of the bed.

And now, because he was honest and good, Ivetta wanted to protect him from Luda’s sneering condescension. For this reason, she had asked that he find someone else to work his shift on Saturday night, when her mother was going to make a rare appearance at the Russian Riviera.

“But I am a doorman,” Kostya said. “What do I care how she looks at me?”

“I care,” Ivetta said.

Most of her family would be there Saturday night, and she did not want to introduce him to them under those circumstances. If they were to meet him, it should be done across a table, properly and with respect. Not with her family celebrating her grandfather’s birthday while Kostya was relegated to the door or the bar—an employee.

“Did you ask Zyama?” Ivetta said.

“I will.”

Up until that afternoon, Kostya had been prepared to do just that, but now he couldn’t imagine how it was possible. Zyama had expended considerable energy publicizing the fact that he had a Siberian boxing champion working his door—he would have opposed a change at the door on a night without gangsters. And, even if Zyama could be persuaded, Kostya’s conscience would not allow it. Which meant that, as alternatives went, Kostya had two: he could work or he could quit. And he preferred to risk the possibility of gangsters against the certainty of unemployment.

To Ivetta, of course, he could confess none of this. Her reaction would be predictable and extreme. She would go to Zyama or to the police. Both of which would mean the end of his job. Also, she would likely regard the situation as further evidence of their need to run off together and start a new life in another city, far away from her mother. She had urged him to do this before, to leave his demeaning job at the Russian Riviera, to escape somewhere, get married, go to school, start a business, buy a house, have children, live happily. The idea was tempting; Kostya had no attachment to Toronto or to the Russian Riviera, but, at thirty-four, he was no longer a boy. If he quit his job and ran away with Ivetta and she grew tired of him—a man without an education, with few talents, deficient in English—he was afraid that he would find himself back at zero. He would lose even the few things that he had managed to accomplish.

At fourteen, in the gymnasium of the No. 4 High School, Kostya and his classmates, stripped to their underpants, had submitted to a series of physical tests administered by the head boxing trainer of the Omsk Spartak Athletics Club. The man had measured the length of their arms; checked with calipers the thickness of the skin below their eyebrows; had them execute the standing broad jump and a complex version of hopscotch. Then, to eliminate criers and bleeders, he had punched each boy in the nose. From a class of twenty boys, he had selected three. Kostya was one of them.

This was in 1975, one year before the Montreal Olympics. The trainer, widely known to be the son of an enemy of the people, had invited himself to Kostya’s apartment to meet with his parents. In the communal kitchen, Kostya’s mother served tea and condensed milk. The meeting was very formal, as though important business were being transacted. Kostya’s trainer presented himself using his full name: Emil Osipovich Shtenberg.

“How would you like it,” Emil asked, “if in five years your son was representing his country at the first Olympics to be held on Russian soil?”

“The boy’s mother wants to know if he will be hurt,” his father said.

“I would be a liar if I said he will not be hit, but you have my word he will not be hurt.”

The discussion did not go much further.

“My wife and I have never been to Moscow,” his father said.

“It is a marvellous city,” Emil said. “I am sure you will enjoy it.”

But although Kostya spent most of the next five years in the gym, his parents didn’t get to go to Moscow. Since the Americans didn’t go to Moscow, either, Emil said it was just as well. Any boxer who claimed to be an Olympic champion without facing any Americans was a fraud. With this in mind, Emil fixed his sights on the future. For the Los Angeles Olympics, Kostya would be twenty-three, which, in Emil’s estimation, was the ideal age for a middleweight. And so Kostya persisted. Emil secured him a job at a furniture plant, whose director, a boxing supporter, made generous allowances for Kostya’s training schedule. Kostya received the privileges afforded athletes: food coupons, a new tracksuit, occasional trips to cities in western Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Over time, he also attained a degree of local recognition: girls smiled at him and men slapped him on the back.

By the winter of 1984, Kostya was the middleweight champion of Omsk. Then of western Siberia. To take the title, he beat a boy from Novosibirsk, opening a gash over his left eye and flooring him repeatedly with straight rights. After the referee stopped the fight, the boy sat on the canvas and wept. On the train back to Omsk, Emil admonished Kostya for showing too much sympathy.

“He can’t go to his right,” Kostya said, “and his mother has cancer of the pancreas.”

“Whose mother doesn’t have cancer of the pancreas?” Emil said.

“I don’t see what’s to celebrate.”

“In life, anytime you win, celebrate.”

In this sense, Emil had been right. That fight, it turned out, was the high point of Kostya’s career. Soon afterward, he lost a split decision to a fighter from Chelyabinsk and once again failed to qualify for the national team. The fight had been close, but one of the judges had scored it overwhelmingly in his opponent’s favor. When the announcement was made, the referee had had to restrain Emil from assaulting the judge.

According to Emil, politics had been at play. The authorities had not wanted to advance a fighter trained by the son of an enemy of the people. Fifty years earlier, before Emil was even born, Stalin had accused his father of Trotskyism and shipped him to Norilsk. Emil had been paying the price ever since. Now Kostya was being punished as well. The system was vile and corrupt, and it was only a small consolation when the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.

Under the strictest confidence, Emil told Kostya that he was finished with the Soviet Union.

“It so happens,” Emil said, “my father was Jewish.” Laughing, he added, “Hard to believe that this would bring me anything except more trouble.”

A year later, Emil boarded a train and was gone. He promised Kostya a postcard from wherever it was that he landed. He promised to bring him over to the West, where his natural gifts would be rewarded. Kostya waited for the postcard, but it never came. Gradually, he deviated from his training regimen. He spent more time with friends from the furniture plant, went to the banya, drank a little, got involved with women. Occasionally, when he felt the urge in his back and shoulders, Kostya returned to the gym, but once there he felt like a guest. People recognized his face, but fewer and fewer remembered his name.

In this way, like everyone else, Kostya lived his life. He watched the Seoul Olympics on television and felt only a passing sense of regret. He remained at the furniture plant until it was purchased by a consortium of Germans and Swedes. Afterward, he took the kind of work available to him: physical labor, often outdoors. It was when he was working on a lumber crew, surrounded by men like himself—the anonymous many who were failing to prosper in the new Russia—that he received the letter from Emil. The envelope bore a Toronto address. In the letter, Emil apologized for not having written for six years, but offered to make good on his promise to bring Kostya to the free world. The letter included specific instructions and a check for nine hundred American dollars.

Twelve years later than planned, Kostya rode the train from Omsk to Moscow—only now his destination was not the Olympic Village but a travel agency. Partly because the Peruvians did not demand a visa, Kostya bought a plane ticket to Lima. He turned the remainder of his money over to an old woman who claimed to be Emil’s aunt. She provided him with a pillow and a wool blanket and helped him push a coffee table against her living-room wall. Kostya stayed with her for three nights, until his flight departed for Peru. Most of the other passengers on the plane were Russian, and Kostya wondered how many of them had the same intentions he did. It seemed strange that so many Russians would want to go to Peru. To him, almost all of them looked suspicious. He assumed that he looked suspicious as well, and feared that one of the passengers or the stewardesses would denounce him. But when the plane set down for the connection in Gander, Newfoundland, Kostya was invited to exit along with everyone else.

To his surprise, everything happened just as Emil had written. He followed the line of passengers down a long hallway and found himself inside the terminal. He chose a chair in the remotest part of the concourse and went through the contents of his shoulder bag. At the very bottom he found his sneakers. Doing his best to casually conceal what he was doing, he peeled the insole off his right shoe and palmed the scrap of paper he had hidden there. Then he repacked his bag and walked the floor of the terminal until he saw what he was looking for. Standing near a newsstand was a woman in a uniform. Kostya did not know what the uniform signified, but it looked official. Willing himself forward, as though for the proverbial leap into cold water, Kostya approached the woman and read from the scrap of paper in his hand.

“Ya yem a refugee,” Kostya said.

Subverting his every reasonable expectation, the woman responded in heavily accented Russian.

“You want refugee status?”

“Yes,” Kostya said.

“Follow me,” she instructed.

Kostya spent two weeks in the refugee shelter in Gander before he was claimed by Father Nikita, a Russian Orthodox priest who operated a halfway house for Russian refugees in Toronto. When he arrived at the house, Emil was there to greet him. That same night, Kostya moved into Emil’s one-bedroom apartment in the north end of the city. The building was occupied mainly by Russians, flanked by other buildings occupied by other Russians. Many of these Russians were also Jews, though Kostya couldn’t particularly tell the difference. On the main street, there were Russian delicatessens, Russian bookshops, Russian video stores, and even signs and posters in Russian tacked onto the bus shelters and telephone poles. At the nearby park and at the playground, Kostya heard as much Russian as English. For Kostya, the non-Russian world existed only in the various gyms where Emil took him for their workouts. But, even there, Kostya was rarely required to communicate in any but the crudest ways. He learned the English vocabulary of boxing: jab, cross, hook, slip, uppercut. Also useful was the word “O.K.”

Not long after Kostya settled in, Emil drove him to meet their benefactor. They made the short trip in Emil’s minivan, which he had been using for years to deliver pizza.

The man they were to meet was Bomka Goldfarb. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bomka had sold real estate in Toronto, but after the collapse he had returned to his native Kiev and made a fortune dealing in manganese. He was one of the richest Russian immigrants in Toronto.

Bomka designated the meeting not at his offices but at a new Russian restaurant in which he held a partial interest. The restaurant was minutes away from Emil’s apartment, in a strip mall. It featured, Emil had heard, a massive fountain in the foyer.

The fountain, Bomka Goldfarb explained when he greeted them, was a reproduction of one he had seen in Rome. When he invested in the restaurant, it had been on the condition that it include such a fountain. The fountain was a marble sculpture. It reached almost to the ceiling and consisted of four fish supporting the torso of a powerfully built man. The man appeared to be either drinking from or blowing into a large shell. To Kostya’s eyes, the man’s face bore a resemblance to Bomka Goldfarb’s.

Bomka directed them to a table near a broad stage that boasted a gleaming white piano. He bade them wait, then returned several moments later accompanied by a thin, pinched-faced man.

“Very talented,” Bomka said. “Emil came to me and said, ‘How would you like to invest in a boxer?’ I had been thinking about a racehorse. But Emil said, ‘A boxer is cheaper and more interesting than a horse.’ He’ll be fighting at the Trump Plaza just as soon as we can get his immigration in order.”

“Where were you a boxing champion?” Zyama asked.

“In Siberia,” Emil said. “In 1984. He would have gone to Los Angeles, if not for the boycott.”

“Must have been very disappointing for you,” Zyama said.

“You cannot imagine,” Emil said.

“I was talking to him,” Zyama said.

“It was disappointing for both of us,” Emil said.

“What’s wrong with him? Can’t he speak?”

“Of course he can speak,” Emil said.

“When do you become more interesting than a horse?” Zyama asked.

“What horse?” Kostya said.

“I like a sense of humor,” Zyama said.

The meeting ended with Bomka’s renewed pledge to expedite Kostya’s immigration process. He had top lawyers in his employ. They were extremely well connected. If asked, they could get asylum for Stalin, he said.

On the drive home, Emil was in very high spirits. More than once, he volunteered that he was pleased with the results of their meeting.

“You made a good impression,” Emil said.

“Why did you say I was a champion?”

“It’s a word someone like Bomka Goldfarb understands.”

“He’ll be disappointed. I’m not the fighter I was six years ago,” Kostya said.

“Six years ago I was delivering pizzas. And when I wasn’t delivering pizzas I was guarding the lobby of a condominium. So what was I supposed to write you? ‘Dear Kostya, I have no money. The boxing establishment treats me like a nuisance. Nobody here cares if I live or die’? What would you have done with this kind of letter?”

Kostya thought that he would have liked such a letter. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but, thinking about the letter, he could see it on the tidy kitchen table where his mother would have left it. He could see himself, in the evening, after the factory, sitting with the letter in his hands. He imagined himself in that past. It was good to hear from Emil, to read about his troubles. It was good to think that, in a distant country, he had a friend who remembered him.

Ivetta had never met Emil, but she had an opinion of him. She also had an opinion of Bomka Goldfarb and Skinny Zyama. It angered her that such people would deceive Kostya, and it angered her that he would allow himself to be deceived.

“Bomka gave assurances and the lawyers gave assurances. Emil trusted them and I trusted Emil,” Kostya said.

“Who in their right mind would trust a person like Bomka Goldfarb?”

“He paid Emil to bring me over. He sent a check each month for rent and expenses. We thought, Why would he do that if he wasn’t serious?”

“Last month, I bought a pair of shoes. Even at the store, I wasn’t sure I wanted them. But they were only sixty dollars. I wore them once. Long enough to become bored with them. Now they’re in the back of my closet.”

“It’s true,” Kostya said. “It’s always good if you can afford to buy.”

But if you couldn’t afford to buy, things were different. And the nature of the difference could not be explained to someone like Ivetta, who had forgotten what it was like to be deprived. Ivetta would say that there are always choices, but after a certain point—even when looking back—Kostya could not see the choices. Would he have been better off in Siberia if he had declined Emil’s offer? Should he have returned to Moscow with Emil? Could these be considered legitimate choices? To his way of thinking, confronted by the available options, he had always just pursued the least unpromising.

The same applied to Bomka Goldfarb. Both he and Emil had been subject to Bomka’s whims. Given the circumstances, what were their alternatives? Bomka had told them to sign papers, and so Kostya had signed papers. Bomka had told them to wait, and so they had waited. Occasionally, Emil made phone calls to ascertain the progress. He made the calls from behind his closed bedroom door, but the apartment was not large and the door was hardly soundproof. First, Emil had called the lawyers. Later, he had called an associate of Bomka Goldfarb’s. Then, when the associate became unreachable, Emil left messages with a secretary.

To placate Kostya, Emil posed a rhetorical question: If Bomka has forgotten about us, why are we still getting monthly checks?

The delay was understandable. Lawyers were notoriously slow. And who could compete with immigration officials—bureaucrats—when it came to laziness and inefficiency?

Emil counselled patience, but he paid a promoter to get Kostya on the undercard of a show in Windsor. This he considered money well spent—many of the fighters on the card would be Americans, and the whole thing would be broadcast on television in Windsor and Detroit. Also, the promoter had given his word that he would pit Kostya against a young fighter, a Golden Gloves champion, handled by smart people, expected to go far. But, most important, the show would allow Bomka to see with his own eyes the value he was getting for his money.

The fight was scheduled for the February of a cold winter. To get to Bomka, Emil parked near his mansion and spent the predawn hours wrapped in blankets, sitting in the van. When Bomka left for work, Emil tailed him to his office. He waited an appropriate half hour and then went in, bringing with him a box of chocolates for the secretary. When he recounted the story for Kostya, he stressed that Bomka had been very glad to see him—and particularly glad about the imminent boxing match in Windsor. So glad, in fact, that, to undertake the journey, he planned to hire one limousine for himself, his wife, his kids, and Skinny Zyama and a second limousine solely for Emil and Kostya.

“I hope you refused the limousine,” Kostya said.

“You don’t want the limousine?”

“Someone who hasn’t won a fight in six years shouldn’t arrive in a limousine.”

“To be honest,” Emil said, “I don’t entirely disagree, but this isn’t something I could have explained to Bomka Goldfarb. Here’s what I suggest: if it bothers you, ignore it’s a limousine. Pretend it’s the van.”

But the limousine, a black stretch Cadillac, was not easy to ignore. As soon as they climbed inside, the driver drew their attention to the bar, the television, the VCR, the selection of Russian videos, and the refrigerator stocked with smoked meats and caviar. Everything compliments of Bomka Goldfarb.

“He has a fight today. No food. No alcohol. No distractions,” Emil said.

“Too bad,” the driver said.

“That’s the way it is,” Emil said.

“It’s four hours to Windsor,” the driver said. “A long time to stare out the window at nothing.”

“Élite athletes must be focussed,” Emil said.

“No doubt,” the driver said. “I was never an élite athlete myself, but I know something about it. My daughter is a dancer and my ex-wife was a prima ballerina. Danced with Baryshnikov.”

“Very interesting,” Emil said.

“Boxer,” the driver said, “if you get bored staring out the window, say the word, I’ll tell you my life story.”

Eventually, Kostya heard his story, though not before he and Emil arrived at the Bavaria Club in Windsor—a low, two-story building with a wooden roof and white stucco walls. From the parking lot, it resembled a restaurant or a modest hotel. Obeying signs and arrows, Emil and Kostya found the Sports Hall; there they discovered a ring encircled by several rows of metal folding chairs and a handful of people—easily identified as other fighters and trainers waiting for the weigh-in. The promoter saw Emil coming and, despite the look on Emil’s face, extended his hand and smiled. Emil leaned into the promoter’s face, ignoring his outstretched hand, and started shouting—mainly in English but partly in Russian. Kostya understood only the Russian, a collection of obscenities bred of the prison camps and the Army.

After Emil finished his tirade, he stalked back to Kostya.

“We could call Bomka,” Kostya said. “Say the fight is cancelled.”

“No use,” Emil said. “We’re fucked.”

In a limousine somewhere between Toronto and Windsor, Bomka, his wife, his two sons, and Skinny Zyama were eating and drinking the things that Kostya and Emil had denied themselves. Kostya imagined them dressed for a casino but installed on the metal folding chairs, in a half-empty room decorated with German banners and dingy photographs of the German countryside.

“What do you want to do?” Kostya asked.

“We came here to fight, we fight,” Emil said.

Fourth on the undercard, Kostya fought. His opponent—no Golden Gloves champion—was a grim, heavily muscled black fighter who, in place of satin trunks and boxing boots, wore Army-surplus shorts and basketball shoes. Outside the ring, with a weapon, he would have been the sort of man Kostya would have been happy to avoid, but inside the ring he was plodding and mechanical. Had he cared about the promoter or the spectators, Kostya might have tried to carry the fight into the second round. But there was nobody to impress. Bomka’s wife had taken one step inside the Sports Hall, paused, spoken three words, and then she, Bomka, and the children had disappeared. Only Skinny Zyama remained, and so he was able to watch Kostya joylessly punish the black fighter to the body and then stop him with a left hook to the temple.

Afterward, by way of congratulations, Skinny Zyama handed Kostya a Russian Riviera matchbook.

“Call if you want a job,” he said.

In the summer of 1974, Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in Toronto. In 1978, at the Joint Distribution office in Rome, Luda Sorkin brandished the letter that Baryshnikov had written to her. The letter was not long, but in it Baryshnikov devoted an entire paragraph to Toronto. A little provincial, perhaps, Baryshnikov mused, but a good place to start a ballet school.

“At the Riga Ballet, I danced with Baryshnikov,” Luda Sorkin informed the caseworker.

Luda Sorkin displayed this same letter when the family met with a diplomat at the Canadian Embassy, on Via Zara; she showed it to her remedial-English instructor at George Brown College, having had it translated shortly after the family arrived in Toronto, and when she applied for a small-business loan from the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services she carried the letter, her diploma, and a Latvian newspaper clipping that included a photograph of herself dancing with Baryshnikov.

Seated at the bar of the Russian Riviera, Volodya Sorkin told Kostya, “There wasn’t enough room in the marriage for the three of us.”

“You, her, and Baryshnikov?” Kostya asked.

“Me, her, and the letter,” Volodya said.

Volodya was a regular at the Russian Riviera. On nights when his limousine wasn’t booked, he stopped in to catch Ivetta’s performance in the Vegas-style floor show. Before the show, he nursed a drink and talked to whoever was around—mostly to Kostya, who had little to do but sit at the bar. Fights and confrontations were uncommon. The clientele at the Russian Riviera was predominantly middle-aged, educated, and relatively well off. Also, it was Jewish. In this respect, Kostya discerned a cultural difference between Russians and Jews: on the rare occasion when there was trouble, nobody pulled a knife.

Through Volodya, Kostya became acquainted with Ivetta. Until then, Kostya hadn’t had much interaction with the dancers and musicians, who socialized mainly with one another, but he had taken notice of Ivetta. Not because of some striking physical attribute—with the costumes and the makeup, all the dancers looked like variations on the same woman—but because she possessed a quality that Kostya had observed in the best athletes: she gave the impression of effortlessness. It was the illusion that the forces of time and gravity did not apply equally to all people.

Her face and neck still flushed with the charge of the performance, Ivetta slid in beside her father at the bar. She kissed Volodya affectionately, and seemed to take no notice of Kostya until Volodya turned inclusively in his direction.

“This is my good friend Kostya,” Volodya said.

“Very nice to meet you, Kostya,” Ivetta said.

“Kostya is a boxer,” Volodya said.

“Was a boxer,” Kostya said.

“Not anymore?” Ivetta asked.

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“When were you a boxer?” Ivetta asked.

“It depends who you ask,” Kostya said.

“I asked you.”

“Then I would say six years ago.”

“And if I asked someone else?”

“Then they might say two weeks ago.”

Ivetta fell silent, arched her neck, and studied him. She seemed to be contemplating something, but Kostya couldn’t imagine what. The expression on her face made Kostya wonder if she had misheard what he had said. It was possible, maybe because of the noise in the restaurant, that she had heard not the words he said but instead some strange words that sounded like them. Kostya thought to repeat himself but reconsidered. Instead, he told her that he had seen her dance.

“She’s the star,” Volodya said.

“She’s very good.”

“Nice of you to say,” Ivetta said.

“If I could move like you, I would still be boxing.”

On subsequent nights, even when Volodya wasn’t there, Ivetta took to joining Kostya at the bar. At first, she did so seemingly without intention. After the show, she would pass by the bar, evidently on her way somewhere else, and discover Kostya—unexpectedly, as if for the first time. Later, the pretense was dropped.

Initially, their conversations centered on Kostya’s boxing and his life in Siberia. Ivetta seemed interested in things that Kostya found mundane, if not embarrassing—the details of the furniture plant, his boxing trials with Emil, his empty years after the fall of Communism. In time, Ivetta spoke about her life with her mother and her own ambitions.

“I dance here to make my father happy,” Ivetta said. “Unlike some of the other dancers, I don’t have any fantasies.”

Ivetta had been nine when her family came to Toronto and sixteen when her parents divorced. In Riga, Volodya had been a civil engineer, but in Toronto he could not find a job in line with his qualifications. Instead, he had worked for years as a taxi-driver to support the family while Ivetta’s mother tried to establish her ballet school. Once the school was established, she discarded him. Volodya was no longer the man she’d married, she said. She had married an intellectual; now she lived with a cabdriver.

The divorce had been bitter, and her parents did not stay in contact. Once a week, Ivetta visited her father in his apartment and made him dinner. Then, there were the nights when he saw her dance at the restaurant. Her mother, a purist, despised the Russian Riviera, and the idea that her daughter, classically trained and destined for greater things, would degrade herself by dancing there.

Even before Ivetta went home with Kostya, people had started to comment.

To each of them, independently, Volodya said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Passing them at the bar, Skinny Zyama said, “Don’t get her pregnant. It will kill my show.”

The night that Ivetta finally went home with Kostya, they left the restaurant in separate cars. Kostya drove ahead in Emil’s van and Ivetta followed in a new Nissan Maxima. In the parking lot, Kostya felt the impulse to apologize for his car and, in the apartment, he wanted to apologize again. Clearly, she was used to better. He hadn’t changed anything in the apartment since Emil had left for Moscow. He had never belonged in Canada, Emil had told Kostya, and he’d felt, every day, an exile. A man in his fifties should not come to a strange land, not knowing the language, absent connections, and expect to thrive. He had abandoned his homeland because of a pernicious system, but now that the system had been overthrown he would return. The borders were open. Russia was replete with talent. A Russian fighter could now ply his trade all over the world—in Europe, in America, in Australia. In Moscow, Emil could restore his reputation.

“Keep everything, including the van,” Emil had said. “The ministry mails the registration renewal in October. They have it organized by birth month. Mail them a check and send me a birthday card.”

Kostya slept on the same mattress that Emil had salvaged years before from Goodwill. His furniture consisted of a metal-and-Formica kitchen table, with mismatching pine chairs; a faded gray velour couch; a coffee table with a scored glass top; and a large Zenith television set in a wooden console. But Ivetta didn’t complain. Even as she spent increasingly more time in the apartment, she never once suggested that Kostya replace the table or the bed. They settled into a routine: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, after the Russian Riviera, they drove to the apartment in their separate cars. On the other nights, Ivetta slept at her mother’s house. When Ivetta’s mother confronted her, Ivetta fled to Kostya’s apartment in tears. She threw herself onto his bed and bawled. She stayed like that for a long time, her back shuddering. When Kostya laid his hand on her, Ivetta related the painful details of her argument with Luda. Her mother had said cruel, shameless things. Ivetta increased her sobbing when she told him the worst of them.

“At least your father was something before he became nothing,” Luda had said, “but you, you’re starting with nothing.”

On Saturday, at eight o’clock, in among the arriving guests, Kostya spotted the face of the larger gangster and then that of his smaller companion. Kostya watched them drift from the door to the fountain. At the bar, the larger one settled in to Kostya’s right and his friend took the next seat over. After nodding to Kostya, the larger gangster asked the bartender for two Cognacs, and, when each snifter had been filled, he made no move to pay.

“We’re guests of Zyama Karp’s,” he said.

The bartender glanced at Kostya.

“It’s fine,” Kostya said.

“Where is your boss?” the gangster asked.

“Around,” Kostya said.

“Tell him we’re here.”

Kostya rose from his seat and walked the length of the bar to Skinny Zyama’s office. As he passed the gangsters, he remarked that they were both wearing the same suits as before. The smaller gangster was seated on his barstool with his legs bent, and Kostya could see holes in his socks, exposing white, hairless skin.

Kostya found Zyama standing before a full-length mirror, adjusting his suspenders and straightening his bow tie. His shoes were poised beside his desk and his tuxedo jacket was draped over the back of his admiral’s chair.

Turning from the mirror, Zyama eyed Kostya.

“Fix your tie,” Zyama said.

Kostya fingered the knot of his tie and gave it a superficial tug.

“The gangsters are here,” he said.

“What gangsters?”

“The New Jersey gangsters.”

“What are they doing?”

“Drinking at the bar.”

“Sons of bitches.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get rid of them,” Zyama said. “Just don’t make a scene.”

On his way back, Kostya paused to transfer a set of brass knuckles from his breast pocket to his left trouser pocket. Typically, he did not carry them. Any problem he could not solve with his bare fists was likely a problem he could not solve. But, in this instance, he had brought the brass knuckles as a limited precaution. He felt their weight against his thigh, and checked to be sure that their outline was not visible through the fabric.

At the bar, the larger gangster was smoking a cigarette and surveying the foyer and the dining room. He watched Kostya’s approach.

“You told him?” he asked.

“You should finish your drinks and leave,” Kostya said.

“Is that what he said?”

“No. He just said leave.”

“He’s making a big mistake.”

“Someone is,” Kostya said.

“Maybe even you,” the gangster said.

He smiled and remained on his stool, flaunting his ease. Whatever would happen would not happen just yet, Kostya sensed. The initial crush of guests were then assembling in the foyer—a collection of witnesses and complications.

Kostya left the bar and took up his position by the door, where he oversaw the familiar procession. Moguls in designer suits—their fortunes amassed in the wake of the Soviet collapse—parked their Bentleys, BMWs, and Mercedeses and ascended the steps with their bejewelled wives. Lesser businessmen and professionals—there to celebrate birthdays and significant anniversaries—trooped from Hondas and Toyotas carrying flower arrangements, cake boxes, and bottles of vodka. Amid the disorder of coats, and the near-suffocating fog of rival perfumes and colognes, Kostya spied Ivetta and Ivetta as she would look in twenty years—both Ivettas looked elegant and unhappy. As they neared Kostya, they became more unhappy. With them were an old man and an old woman—Ivetta’s grandparents. Her grandfather was clean-shaven, with a full head of white hair. He wore a brown suit and, for his age, moved precisely and energetically. Her grandmother, unlike most women her age, had hair that was neither dyed nor cut. Instead, it was gathered in a gray bun. She wore a colorful shawl over an Oriental-looking dress and held her husband’s arm. When Luda addressed Kostya, the woman waited patiently.

“So you’re him?” Luda said.

Before he could answer, Luda turned to Ivetta.

“Is this him?”

“Yes.”

“Where are your manners? Why don’t you introduce us?”

Painfully, Ivetta made the introductions.

“Mother, Kostya. Kostya, my mother.”

“Why so formal?” Luda asked. “We may be in-laws. We should embrace.”

That said, neither she nor Kostya inclined to embrace.

“Who is he?” Ivetta’s grandfather asked.

“Ivetta’s boyfriend,” Luda told him.

“We invited him?” the grandfather asked.

“He works here.”

“Is that so?”

“He’s the doorman,” Luda said.

“The doorman?”

“Yes.”

“Does it pay well?” the grandfather asked.

“All right,” Kostya said.

“Cash?”

“Yes.”

“By the hour?

“A flat sum for the night.”

“What about tips?” the grandfather asked.

“Not usually.”

“You live in a house or an apartment?”

“An apartment.”

“Where?”

“Antibes.”

“We used to live there. How many bedrooms?”

“One.”

“What do you pay in rent?”

“Seven hundred dollars,” Kostya said.

“Expensive. You should save up, get a house.”

As her family proceeded into the dining room, Ivetta lagged momentarily behind. While he had been answering her grandfather’s questions, Kostya had watched her face darken with hostility. He had seen her look this way before only in relation to her mother, but, at some level, he had always expected that she would one day direct this look at him. A person has only so many faces—the face you show an enemy you will one day show a friend. But knowing this still had not prepared him for the severity of Ivetta’s contempt.

Keeping a sterile distance from him, she said, “How could you do this to me?”

She spoke loudly enough to cause people nearby to turn their heads. In private, Kostya thought that he might have been able to contend with Ivetta’s anger, but in public he felt inhibited by shame.

“I only asked for one thing,” Ivetta said.

“If it was possible, I would have done it,” Kostya said.

“Do you care about me at all?”

“Yes,” Kostya said.

“No. If you cared about me, you would never have let this happen.”

With a cool finality, Ivetta pivoted on her heel and stranded Kostya in the foyer. He watched as she made her way across the floor and into the dining room to join her family. For the first time, he felt a desire to hurt her. He had never done it before, had never hit Ivetta or anyone, man or woman, in anger, but at that instant there was a pressure in his hands and his shoulder blades that wanted release. If he had been asked to describe the pressure, he would have said that it amounted to the phrase, repeated, “Who needs this?” If he had been able to step outside or find a quiet corner, Kostya thought that he could contain the feeling. If he could blind himself to Ivetta’s presence in the dining room, to the people jostling him, to the gangsters at the bar, he could arrive at a solution. Only a few steps and he could be outside, where he could breathe and think. But as he pressed toward the door he saw the larger gangster waving to him, a leer on his square face, and Kostya did not resist.

“That’s some girl,” the gangster said.

Without answering, Kostya reclaimed his seat at the bar.

“A good figure and a temper. The sort that likes it rough. Gets down like a dog, begs to be slapped around.”

The guests were all in the dining room now, sitting down to their excess of appetizers. Soon, the band would start up. Lyona Ostricker would assume the stage and sing Russian classics and then coarsen his voice and do an imitation of a famous black jazz singer. Guests would toast the objects of their celebrations. Bow-tied waiters would deliver the first course. The dance floor would fill and the band would play Russian and American disco.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Kostya said.

“For who?” the gangster asked.

“Good question.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” the gangster said.

“It does if you stay,” Kostya said.

At the far end of the dining room, near the stage, Kostya saw Skinny Zyama holding court at his usual table. Guests and acquaintances stopped by to pay their respects. The choreographer, a woman twenty years his junior, kept him company.

“You don’t expect us to leave without seeing the famous show?” the gangster said.

“The show is an hour away,” Kostya said.

“We came this far—we’ll wait,” the gangster said.

Kostya regarded the smaller gangster. He sat coiled and seething, his eyes feverish. For the duration of the hour, until the show began, he held the same position. But when the lights dimmed, the dance floor cleared, and the prelude for the spectacle began, he started to shift in his chair. And when the dancers—Ivetta included—assumed the stage for the “Fiddler on the Roof” number, the smaller gangster lowered himself from his seat and made for the men’s room. Without a word, the larger gangster followed.

The floor show normally lasted half an hour. The intermittent changes the choreographer imposed never altered its length. After “Fiddler on the Roof,” there was a number in which the dancers leaped across the stage dressed like cats; then there was a scene from “Swan Lake”; then a song called “Cabaret,” for which Ivetta was the lead. Kostya had seen this incarnation of the show at least thirty times and had memorized its rhythms to the extent that he could hear the words and visualize the steps before they were executed. And he knew that after the end of “Fiddler on the Roof” there remained more than twenty minutes in the show.

Quietly, suppressing the desire to hurry, Kostya crossed the length of the foyer to the men’s room. On the way, he placed his left hand in his pocket and slipped his fingers into the brass knuckles. With his other hand he pushed open the heavy men’s-room door. To the right were eight tall porcelain urinals. To the left was a long expanse of black marble floor and six white marble basins on nickel pedestals. The walls were covered with gilt-framed mirrors, and by the door were two brass tubs—one filled with fresh linen towels and the other with a pile of the same towels, already soiled. Opposite the basins were four ceiling-high toilet stalls—slabs of black marble with nickel-plated doors. The room was spotless and silent. Kostya listened for some indication of the gangsters. Then, using his knee, he tested the stall doors. The first two swung open, but the third held fast. At the disturbance, a voice belonging to the larger gangster said, “Occupied.” Kostya jostled the door again.

“Fuck off,” the gangster said.

Gauging his distance, Kostya reared back and slammed his heel against the door. The bolt gave way, and the door flung inward to reveal the two gangsters. The smaller one was seated on the toilet, and the larger gangster squatted in front of him. It took Kostya a moment to decipher what they were doing. The smaller gangster had his jacket off and one of his shirtsleeves rolled up. A belt was cinched at his biceps and a syringe protruded from his forearm. From what Kostya could tell, the man did not look conscious.

From his position on the floor, the larger gangster gave Kostya a look of animal hatred.

“My brother is sick,” he said.

An instant later, he sprang up. Kostya moved reflexively, slipped to his left, shifted his weight, and threw an uppercut that caught the gangster’s jaw. He felt the force of the blow through the brass knuckles and into his shoulder. He could not remember when he had hit anyone as hard, and he felt a shiver of pleasure descend through his knees. The gangster tottered to one side, bumped against the stall, and then pitched backward onto the floor. There was blood on his face and shirt collar and a spreading pool, oily black, on the dark surface of the marble.

For a time, the only sound in the room was breathing. Kostya heard his own, the rasping of the beaten gangster, and the slow, nasal exhalations of the smaller gangster, slumped against the toilet tank. Kostya tried to settle his pulse and clear his mind. Both men were breathing; they would live. Kostya had contained the mess to the bathroom, and if he acted quickly he could summon Skinny Zyama, remove the gangsters, and clean up without disturbing the guests. Nobody could accuse him of having failed to do his job, but Kostya derived little contentment from this. The job was something he no longer wanted. The thought of pleasing Skinny Zyama or of sitting at the bar to watch Ivetta dance another night seemed unendurable. It occurred to Kostya that he could leave the gangsters to be discovered by Skinny Zyama or someone else. He could walk away. While the show was still on, he could leave without attracting attention. He could find another apartment and another job no worse than this one. It did not need to be difficult.

Kostya took a moment to compose himself. He examined his hands and saw blood. But before he could consult the mirror he heard movement at the men’s-room door. Kostya blocked it with his foot.

“Busy cleaning. Use the women’s room,” he said.

“The hell I will,” the man replied, and kept pushing.

Kostya slipped his fingers back into the brass knuckles before he released the door and Ivetta’s grandfather forced his way in.

“There’s been an accident,” Kostya said.

“I can see that,” Ivetta’s grandfather said.

The old man bent and examined the gangster’s broken face.

“It only looks bad,” Kostya said.

“I was at the front. I’ve seen bad.”

He walked over to the smaller gangster and placed a hand on his chest.

“Still beating,” the grandfather said.

The old man then stepped into the neighboring stall and urinated. When he’d finished, he moistened a towel in the sink and handed it to Kostya.

“There’s blood on your face,” the old man said.

“It’s his,” Kostya said.

“He needs an ambulance,” the old man said.

“If you think so,” Kostya said.

The music for the “Cabaret” song flowed into the washroom when the old man opened the door. As the door swung shut, Kostya’s thoughts turned to his own grandfather. He had died when Kostya was still young, but Kostya could recall sitting with him as he related stories of the Great Patriotic War. A German grenade had taken three fingers off his left hand. On the back of the hand he had the date and place of the battle tattooed in green ink. At that time, reminders of the war were everywhere. There were tributes and parades to honor the veterans. Movie theatres showed documentaries and heroic epics. In the streets and back lots, Kostya pretended with his friends that they were the Red Army on the attack. To cries of “Forward, Comrades!,” they rose from culverts and trenches and charged across the steppe, rifles pointed, greatcoats flapping. Kostya hadn’t thought about any of this in years.

Distracted, Kostya failed to notice that the smaller gangster had begun to stir until the man half-raised himself from the toilet and blinked somnolently.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“The Russian Riviera,” Kostya replied.

He watched with a measure of sympathetic curiosity as the gangster’s eyes scanned the room, absorbing the details: the broken door, the blood, his brother’s disfigured face. Kostya expected the gangster to collapse again momentarily. He stood with his arms spread in the stall, his elbows locked, his torso canted forward. He looked like a fighter who had got up when he should have stayed down, whose pride and courage would be rewarded only with a harsher beating. He lifted his eyes to Kostya, as if seeing him for the first time.